STRAYDOG blog

October 6, 2017

Straydog designs the new brand and website for CRAFT Artisan Wood Floors

Straydog develops the new name and designs the new brand and website
for CRAFT Artisan Wood Floors

CRAFT Artisan Wood Floors began as “Antique Impressions” in 2004, by its current day President, Rod Gray. Rod was passionate about wood, particularly Alder, for it’s rustic feeling. At the time, Antique Impressions was the only company in Canada selling rustic alder. Since inception, the company has grown in size and reputation and now manufactures some of the most beautiful and appealing engineered wood flooring on the market.

Through these years, their range of products has grown to include Hickory, Oak, Walnut and Reclaimed Heart Pine, as well as Alder. Their main focus today is Hickory, and they are viewed as the preeminent manufacturer of Hickory wood flooring in North America.

Along with the growth of their product line, they have also changed the way they go to market, with a greater focus today on builders, and designers. This change required that the company re-visit their existing name and brand, which no longer supported the quality of their products, nor the re-direction in their marketing and sales. The company was not “antique” and nor were their products. A new name was in order.

Straydog was approached by Rod and his team in March of 2017 to help their re-invent their company’s brand, their name and their website. We took on this challenge with vigour and excitement, and today, we are proud to share in the launch of the CRAFT Artisan Wood Floors brand and website

So how did we come up with the new name “CRAFT”? It stemmed from conversations with Rod Gray. Rod began his career, driving across Canada in his Plymouth Valiant, selling wood flooring out of the trunk of his car. Rod is truly passionate about wood, and he realized that the only way to make a genuinely beautiful wood floor – a floor that people would make a deep connection to, and would fall in love with – is to make it by hand. Since then, Rod’s uncompromising commitment to laborious and time-consuming manual techniques of craftsmanship has enabled him to produce spectacular wood flooring that exhibits textures and tones unmatched by any other manufacturer in the industry.

So it is from this reference to craftmanship that the name CRAFT was born. The name is easy to say, easy to spell and is a great representation of the quality of the wood as it relates to art and mastery and the handmade ideals and values of a bygone era that Rod holds so dear.

The CRAFT logo is a “dendro”, representing the core of a tree, and the design was inspired by what a wood craftsman might see as he inspects the grain of wood through a loupe.

The logo is supported by a clean and simple font with the minimalistic grey and black colours chosen to support the name and logo rather than to draw attention away from the unique and clean design.

The CRAFT name and bold new brand is now authentically aligned with the what the company stands for and the premium products that it offers. This is now showcased in a beautiful and visually impactful website that is the envy of their competitors.

Our scope of services:

Strategic brand discovery

Brand naming

Brand identity and grpahic design

Graphic design of business collateral: business cards, product paging and signage

Digital strategy for web design, UX, IA and wireframing

Website design

WordPress development

Web and print copyrighting

Brand management

Brand launch

If you’re looking for strategic brand or website design and development services,
then give us a whistle! Request a Proposal